Last week, Harvard Professor Julia Minson Ph.D. and mediator and Conflict Management Consultant Heather Sulejman visited 100 East End to share the science of constructive disagreement with Upper School students. Professor Minson, has spent years studying the psychology of disagreement and developed the research behind the work she presented at Chapin. In pursuit of her goal to help people build the necessary skills to have more productive conversations with opposing viewpoints, she developed a chatbot named Riley.
This visit to Chapin was educational for both the students and the visitors. Professor Minson is currently developing her college-level course, "Why Won’t You Listen to Me? Understanding People, Conflict, and People in Conflict," for high schools — and eventually middle schools — where she believes her work will have the most impact. While the Upper School students benefitted from their visitors’ expertise, Professor Minson and Ms. Sulejman can use the students’ feedback to improve their course.
Over the course of the day, participants — 11 Chapin student volunteers — learned the framework and psychology behind disagreement before diving into hands-on practice with and without the chatbot.
To begin the workshop, the students met with our guests over lunch. They spent an hour discussing recent public disagreements and dissecting relevant ones from pop culture — whether or not, for example, the newest Taylor Swift album is “good.” Throughout the conversation, Professor Minson and Ms. Sulejman shared the causes of conflict and the reasons people avoid it.
The students were introduced to a fundamental explanation for conflict known as “Naive Realism,” the framework for which, Professor Minson explained, suggests that people believe their world view to be accurate, making it difficult to assess your own biases. As a result, people might believe that other “reasonable” people also have accurate world views. When they encounter disagreement, they may assume there is something wrong with the disagreeable person rather than explore nuance and acknowledge the possibility of an alternate viewpoint. This is at the center of Professor Minson’s research, with her work focusing on constructively conversing when disagreeing and teaching people conversational receptiveness.
Through extensive research and surveys, Professor Minson identified specific words and phrases that are particularly helpful and effective in high-stress conversations. Her philosophy centers around H.E.A.R., an acronym for a set of guidelines she created to help make her work easy to remember. H represents “hedging your claims,” which leaves space to acknowledge that people hold other beliefs instead of dismissing them. The E stands for “emphasizing agreement,” a reminder that, wherever possible within your disagreement, it is important to find moments of understanding and verbalize them. A, which is for “acknowledging the opposing perspective,” advises that you take a moment in your conversation to give space to what your opponent has said and time to reiterate their argument before responding. This helps the other person to feel heard, which, Professor Minson underscored, is one of the most important parts of communication and key to successful conversations. Lastly, the R stands for “reframing to the positive” and suggests that, whenever possible, you avoid using words like “can’t,” “won’t” or “do not” and, instead, take the same idea and frame it in a positive light. Minimizing negativity in a difficult conversation can help avoid particularly painful pitfalls and keep the discussion productive.
The H.E.A.R. framework helps to establish trust and respect within conversation, transforming what could be a contentious and heated argument into a thoughtful discussion. Time and again, Professor Minson's research showed that people trained in conversational receptiveness had consistently more positive and effective interactions.
Our students had the chance to put these skills and knowledge to work in a second session at the end of the school day. First, they spent 15 minutes writing a message incorporating the H.E.A.R. principles to someone with whom they had recently disagreed. After a short discussion, the scholars pivoted to a conversation with Riley the chatbot.
Riley has been designed to incorporate Professor Minson’s research and help teach people how to apply the art of H.E.A.R. When users enter a session with Riley, the chatbot takes the user through a three-phase exercise. First, the user chooses a topic and shares their thoughts on the subject with Riley who is in “coach” mode. Next Riley moves into “debate” mode, where the goal is to strengthen the user’s conversational receptiveness skills, not to win an argument. Riley has been trained to never change its opinion. Whatever the user’s belief, the chatbot will always take an opposing stance. After exchanging messages five or so times, Riley ends the session and returns to “coach” mode. It’s at this time that the chatbot reviews the user’s conversation and highlights areas where the user has successfully applied the H.E.A.R. framework and areas where they can improve.
The students’ use of Riley the chatbot to refine their conversation skills will, ultimately, help Professor Minson adapt her work for the high and middle school levels.
Throughout the session and at a farewell dinner, our students asked insightful questions and contributed meaningfully to each conversation. Professor Minson and Ms. Sulejman appreciated their thoughts and were glad to receive their valuable feedback about the course and their experience using Riley.
Our students, eager learners, left looking forward to bringing their new understanding of constructive disagreement to school and into their personal lives.
